Page 19

Read our autumn newsletter

Read our autumn newsletter which is packed with stories about how your fundraising is helping to support children and adults with cerebral palsy in Scotland reach their full potential.

In this edition, we share the story of three year-old Mohammed. Mohammed’s family recently moved to Scotland from Kabul, Afghanistan, and our therapists have supported the family to understand how Mohammed can incorporate therapy into his daily life and play.

Thanks to determined fundraising, we now have a clinical psychologist available at Cerebral Palsy Scotland who is providing psychology support sessions to people with cerebral palsy when they need it most. In this newsletter, Marion discusses how she has benefitted from these one-to-one sessions.

The newsletter also lets you know about how you can register for our annual conference taking place on 6 October, and how you can support people with cerebral palsy by taking part in our firewalk on 8 October.

Read autumn newsletter

Raising cerebral palsy awareness in education

We all know how important it is to raise awareness, whether it is a cause or a disability and there are many ways to make your voice heard.

Let’s turn to cerebral palsy – there are still a lot of people who don’t know what the disability is or how it affects individuals who live with it. Society is getting better at understanding disability but there is more to be done and throughout this blog – I will be talking about how a school marked cerebral palsy awareness day and about how raising awareness in education settings can make a difference.

Earlier this year, Debbie got in touch with us at Cerebral Palsy Scotland to let us know what she had done to mark national cerebral palsy awareness day on 25 March 2022. Debbie lives with cerebral palsy and attends Millburn Academy in Inverness – Debbie was keen on getting her school on board to help raise awareness about her disability – setting out ideas and plans herself for the day.

Debbie, along with the support of her school, put so much work and thought into the project by making posters with information about the disability and how it affects people including sharing facts. They created a presentation about what cerebral palsy is with a brief explanation using bright colours and images. On the information sheet, there were different links to websites relating to cerebral palsy teenagers including a YouTube clip which fully explains the different aspects of the disability.

All these creations made a difference for the school pupils, helping them to understand what CP is and everyone came together to support the awareness day. The pupils were asked to come into school in non-uniform and to wear green on the day – the colour of cerebral palsy awareness. The presentation was sent out to all the classes and a message went out over the schools tannoy.

We were delighted to hear about this awareness day which was organised by Debbie and as a cerebral palsy charity, a big well done to everyone who put the effort into marking the day – a heartfelt thank you to Debbie and everyone at Millburn Academy.

Cerebral Palsy Scotland welcomes anyone to raise awareness of cerebral palsy. The more people who know of it, the better. We would encourage education settings especially primary and secondary schools to get in touch to find out what they can do like Millburn Academy to raise awareness and educate young people about CP and disability in general. It is very important that pupils understand different things relating to the subject around disability and we can support you to use the right resources.

Get in touch here: getinvolved@cpscot.org.uk

Blog written by Bernie Hunter, Cerebral Palsy Scotland volunteer

Craighalbert Centre

Craighalbert Centre Enabling children in Scotland with neurological conditions (birth-19 years) to reach their potential and fulfil their ambitions through integrated learning, therapy, and care. Providing a range of child- and family-centred programs delivered by highly specialist physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech therapists, teachers, and learning, care and therapy practitioners.

Policy and campaign update

During the past few months, we have been busy keeping the needs of people with cerebral palsy at the forefront of the minds of statutory service providers and policy makers.

Our CEO, Stephanie Fraser, Chairs the Scottish Government’s National Advisory Committee for Neurological Conditions (NACNC). The committee is focused on ensuring Scottish Government implement the Framework for Action for Neurological Conditions which covers from 2020 – 2025. Cerebral Palsy Scotland has had some funding from this work to look at service provision for adults with CP through our CP Connect programme and this coming year we look forward to working with specific local areas (Health and Social Care Partnerships in Midlothian and in Clackmannanshire and Stirling) to develop this work further in a local setting. Scottish Government published a mid-term progress report on the implementation of the Framework in July: neurological-care-support-framework-action-2020-2025-midpoint-progress-report.pdf (www.gov.scot)

Cerebral Palsy Scotland are also members of the Cross Party Group for Disability in the Scottish Parliament: https://www.parliament.scot/get-involved/cross-party-groups/current-and-previous-cross-party-groups/2021/disability. At their latest meeting, MND Scotland presented the findings of their report on the housing needs for people with MND, some of which is also extremely relevant for people with CP. You can read their report here: https://aaf1a18515da0e792f78-c27fdabe952dfc357fe25ebf5c8897ee.ssl.cf5.rackcdn.com/2256/MND-Scotland-No-Time-To-Lose-Housing-Report.pdf?v=1646301622000

The All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) is forum for everyone across the UK to come together at Westminster. The group’s purpose is to enable policy makers to better understand the challenges faced by individuals of all ages with cerebral palsy and their families. Importantly, it has been constituted to take a life-long approach. The group has already published three reports, the first on early years, the second on best practice in education, health and care, teaching and learning for children with CP schooling and most recently a report on removing barriers for adults. The group is currently calling for evidence with regard to transitioning from children’s to adult services and will meet again in September to discuss this. To read these reports, you can find them here: https://connectpa.co.uk/appg-cerebral-palsy/

We were delighted to be involved in the Royal Society of Medicine’s conference on 7^th July Medicine and Me: Time for a new approach to adults with cerebral palsy with UP – The Adult Cerebral Palsy Movement. Speakers included contributions from Cerebral Palsy Scotland trustee, Dr Kirsty Colquhoun and CEO, Stephanie Fraser. A copy of the event recording can be accessed here: https://vimeo.com/732291911/4db25bfc7d

As members of the Neurological Alliance of Scotland, Cerebral Palsy Scotland welcomed last month the publication of the first patient survey undertaken by the Neurological Alliances from across the UK. The report (which can be read here: https://www.scottishneurological.org.uk/news-resources/) highlighted that 1 in 6 people across the UK are living with a neurological conditions and that at least half were continuing to experience delays to accessing appointments and services. The publication of the survey coincided with Carers’ Week and a debate in the House of Lords on neurological conditions to which our CEO, Stephanie Fraser contributed: https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/2022-06-09/debates/B6CB63B1-B491-4A14-B4EF-E6D382CEF6E8/NeurologicalConditions. We look forward to building on this growing evidence to ensure improved data collection so that people with cerebral palsy become more visible to service providers.

Morag Inglis

Morag is a solicitor with Mitchells Roberton becoming the first female Partner in the firm in 1993. After many years in her role as the Managing Partner, Morag became the first female Chairman of Mitchells Roberton in April 2021. As from 1 April 2025, as a move towards retirement Morag has moved to the role of Consultant: Morag still views people – both clients and colleagues to be at the core of business.

Morag has long been aware of the good work done by Cerebral Palsy Scotland and was delighted to be invited to join the Board as a Trustee in 2022, coinciding with the retirement of her former colleague Donald Reid who was a trustee for many years.

Mitchells Roberton traces its roots back as one of the oldest legal firms in Glasgow and takes pride in the fact that the firm has strong links with and has acted for a number of Glasgow Charitable Organisations.

The chance for Morag to be involved with Cerebral Palsy Scotland fits very well with the fact that Mitchells Roberton has helped families, generation after generation and constantly strives to preserve and strengthen the Mitchells Roberton caring culture within the business.

Morag brings to the Board her broad legal experience: for much of her legal career Morag specialised in areas of commercial practice acting for a wide range of clients in property disposals, acquisitions, leases and in offering a variety of business and general contract advice. Morag also has a large private client base and so gets involved in all sorts of issues for them too. She believes in providing a holistic approach to problem solving always looking at the wider picture.